Employees could miss out on £4,785 a year from extra hours working from home

LaToya Harding
·Business Reporter, Yahoo Finance UK
Updated ·2 min read
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52% of people admitted to doing more hours than expected of them, with 47% saying they start earlier each morning and 49% saying they are working late more often. Photo: Getty

More than half of UK workers say they are putting in extra hours at home meaning they could be missing out on more than £4,700 ($6,376) a year.

According to a survey carried out by Furniture at Work, 52% of people admitted to doing more hours than expected of them, with 47% saying they start earlier each morning and 49% saying they are working late more often.

When it came to working extra hours, 3-in-10 (30%) people said that they work an extra 3-4 hours a week when working from home, with nearly half (45%) saying they do over 5 hours extra. Only 1% of those who do extra said they do less than 1 hour.

The data, which surveyed 2,000 office workers, through Opinion Matters, who worked from home throughout the pandemic, also found that employees who do overtime were working an average of 5 hours and 54 minutes more every week. This equated to an extra 40.9 days across a whole year of work.

Based on the 2019 average weekly wage in the UK of £585, taken from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), this means some employees could be providing free labour and missing out on £4,785.30 a year, Furniture at Work said.

In contrast, one in four (25%) respondents said they do less hours when working from home. Of those 25%, nearly four in 10 (39%) admitted to doing 5+ hours less work during their week when compared to their working hours when office-based.

Respondents also highlighted several positives to working from home, with some 78% saying favouring the lack of a daily commute and 70% saying they’ve saved money.

READ MORE: The top 25 companies looking for remote UK talent

A spokesperson for Furniture at Work said: “When offices were forced to close in March, many of us couldn’t imagine it lasting this long and it seems it’s had some long-term effects on our work-life balance. The fact that almost half of those remote working in the UK are doing five or more hours extra week is a shocking statistic.

“Perhaps saving money and not spending hours on a commute has helped to negate this fact, however, with 56% actually saying they feel their work-life balance has improved. All this means that maybe employees have more to do to ensure their staff are using their newfound time more wisely and not over-exerting themselves with work.”

Watch: Goodbye office? Examining if the shift to remote working will last